It Started Off Slow
by paranoia.pink
Summary: As he grew up, he noticed more and more inconsistencies. An Itachi introspective, written mostly because Itachi looked like he really did love Sasuke in some of those flashbacks.


When Itachi was still small, the village was attacked by a demon and saved by the valiant sacrifice of the Fourth Hokage. He doesn't remember the Fourth at all, but was deeply affected by his death. The most powerful ninja in the village died so that everyone else could live. Without him, Itachi thought, mother and father and everybody would be dead. The entire village would be dead.

The first few weeks after the funeral, Itachi couldn't look around without thinking about it. With every passing face, _Without him, they would be dead. _Even now, as a missing nin, whenever he looks at Hokage mountain, his eyes go automatically to the Fourth.

As he grew older, Itachi started to notice more and more inconsistencies. He was taught that there were things that were right and things that were wrong. Before he had even been able to stand up on his own he had started to notice things, clutching at his mom's skirts and surreptitiously sucking his thumb because ninja weren't supposed to suck their thumbs, silly Itachi, my sweet baby boy. White lies, and bigger lies. Auntie took extra candlesticks from the main house as perks. His father pretended to love mother, but really he looked at the servant girls an awful lot.

He didn't understand what any of it meant, but his special, special eyes saw it all. There were all these secrets – and _lies_, which Mommy said were bad – and they made Itachi more and more frustrated and angry every time he saw them. But he was content, in the end, with the fabric of his village. The ninja were there to protect the land, and if they lied a little, so did everyone. Itachi was willing to compromise; adults were weird, but that didn't mean they were bad.

He probably would have gone on happily thinking this way for a long time if he hadn't stumbled across them in the Forest of Death. They looked like piles of rotting leaves, wet and limp; or they would have if he couldn't see the little paws sticking out at odd angles. They were all killed neatly, with very little blood, and would have looked like they were sleeping if they hadn't been so broken.

And they were everywhere. Little foxes everywhere Itachi looked. Running through the entire forest, he couldn't find a single one alive. There were entire litters clustered together, kits huddled underneath their dead mothers, half already dead from exposure. Itachi looked at them, briefly wishing he had the Sharingan to look and see if any were left. Though he knew, of course, that there could not be. All the foxes in Konoha were dead.

Killed by ninja. For... revenge? Out of fear? What possible logic could justify this? Itachi didn't know. He just knew that he felt angry on behalf of the Fourth; he had fought against a _demon_ and won and now they were avenging him by killing _foxes_? Itachi was very young, but he was also a true genius, so he could see the flaws in the grown-ups around him. And right now, they were looking very flawed. Such a frightened, silly people, he thought with disgust. He turned around and left the forest, left the foxes lying in the dirt to rot.

He killed his first person late one night just after entering his teens. While Sasuke was sitting at home the night of his entrance into the academy, Itachi was on an A-class mission, moving easily in and out of the undergrowth. His teammates followed him from a distance, but it was implicit that tonight was Itachi's night. He had the lead, and his was the word everyone followed.

Itachi ran faster and faster, just wanting to get it over with. He had always been good enough to disable without killing, but tonight was his. It was silly, Itachi mused in one of those weird suspended-in-time moments. His kunai was flying through the air, and he knew it would land in the woman's throat the moment he let go of it. It was silly, because he could have taken her out without a kill. And she was just dying tonight because Itachi needed it to get another rank, one he wasn't even sure he wanted.

The kunai landed with a wet squishing noise, tearing out most of her jugular in the process. Itachi landed, examining the body to confirm the kill, though that almost seemed laughable in this situation. He looked into her bright green eyes, watching as blood seeped onto her red hair. When her arms twitched with residual nerve impulses, he almost flinched, even though he had been expecting it. At his sign, the entire team turned around, target killed, lying on the forest floor in the muck.

It had been so easy, he thought, running back home in silence. It was so much neater.

* * *

This was it, thought Itachi, panting wild-eyed behind a cluster of bushes. Right now, he is going to die. There is an expression on his face he knows is ugly; terror does not suit anyone.

Wild-eyed, he doesn't see the water approaching him until it is almost too late. He just barely ducks the main blast, taking it on the side instead, where it slams him down into the ground. The limb he was standing on is a jagged little splinter broken off violently at the trunk. Running through the forest, he darts glances all around, and watches as one member after another drowns underneath the water pinning them down.

He can't catch his opponent's movements. He doesn't even have time to stop, catch his breath, even think about anything but running. Now, he thinks, now would be a good time for reinforcements to arrive. He's so busy looking around for a safe place to hunker down and wait that he fails to notice the wicked barbed dagger hurtling behind him.

Itachi freezes in shock and pain. Then he's running frantically, one arm clutching his shoulder. He can barely comprehend, but there's a dagger buried in him up to the hilt and blood isn't flowing so much as slowly oozing down his back. Fuck. Fuuuuck. He doesn't want to die, but he's panting and he's never felt this way before, never ever felt this much. He's never been alive before, and he pulls the dagger out with a sense of exhilaration, not caring that it does more damage coming out than going in; he doesn't feel the pain, because he's alive now, for the first time.

Itachi watched his brother train. Sasuke... was weak. But he had the potential to be strong. Itachi watched the boy's body spin through the air and land flat on the ground with a dull thud. A year ago, Itachi knew, he would have gone over and carried Sasuke home.

Itachi leaned back in his tree, eyes glinting dark red in the filtered sunlight. He no longer felt much when he looked at Sasuke, and that was worrying, because there had been something there once. Itachi didn't like the feeling of changing without having noticed. He no longer got much enjoyment out of anything, in fact. But perhaps, Itachi mused, that was because there was nothing to enjoy. Everyone was dull here, almost like they were dead, their bodies continuing to move past their departure. When Itachi looked into his mother's eyes, he could no longer see the tenderness and compassion he had loved. Instead, she was flat and dull. Everyone was. Even little Sasuke, fire burning in his heart. Everyone here was like that, dead inside.

Watching Sasuke fail yet another pitifully easy throw, Itachi sighed in frustration. Konoha was a trap, the Uchiha clan was a trap, his family was a trap. It was bad enough that Itachi was stuck here on Earth. He was sick of being here, sick of having to follow ANBU missions and teams and paperwork. He just couldn't see the point.

Even Shisui... Even he had stopped making Itachi happy. The more Itachi saw him, the more he wanted to stop his laughter and his worried looks and his pathetic attempts to train. Even Shisui... even he did not live a life that Itachi could watch without annoyance. Shisui lived a false life, was a shadow, like Itachi's mother and father.

Or even Sasuke, who pretended to love him, but envied him with every breath. Itachi could crush him right now, little body panting pitifully on the ground from overtaxing himself. Just crush him throat with one hand, and watch the child's eyes bulge. Or Itachi could reach out, and make Sasuke's life true. Sasuke needed to have a reason to stop pretending. Itachi could reach out and crush the boy's false love as easily as he could kill him.

And perhaps Itachi could finally find a life he could stand to see.

Even a decade or so after he leaves the village hidden in the leaves, he still thinks of it as home, if someone like him can be said to have a home. There is definitely a unique feeling whenever he steps into the country he was born in. Like acceptance, not by other people, but by the trees and the soil and the water. Itachi fights best in Fire country, always has.

There are times Itachi looks up at the sky and the clouds are soft and fluffy, exactly like they were in Konoha; he can't tell whether he's just dreamed the past decade up and starts to to feel all the hidden parts of himself unthaw, as though he could actually still go back and be that person again if only he could just relax for once and close his eyes. But he keeps them open.


End file.
